‘It’s not Charlie I’m afraid of.’
‘But you know him?’ I talked past her fear.
‘George’s friend, yes. I know him. Hateful person.’
‘Did we fight? Charlie and me.’
‘George was afraid. Terrified.’
She was nodding, maybe in agreement that Graham and I had fought, but she was not really hearing me.
‘I didn’t promise anything, though,’ I said in agony, in case George had died because I hadn’t fulfilled my promise.
‘You did so. You promised.’
Patiently, I tried again. ‘I said I’d phone from the office?’
‘You said that.’
‘Mrs Clayton.’ I moistened my lips. ‘Tessa, listen to me. Please. Don’t you know...when I left here, my car wouldn’t start. If I was too late – doing something I don’t understand yet – then that was the reason. I was late getting back to the office.’
Her fingers covered her mouth. From behind them she whispered: ‘But you promised.’ A veritable hell of despair danced behind her eyes.
‘Just to phone? Is that what I promised?’
‘To make contact,’ she said impatiently. ‘I wrote down the number for you.’
‘A telephone number? Whose number?’ I was having to draw it out, word by word.
‘A phone box. I told you. I don’t know where. That was the point. They might have found him. It was to pay for the consignment.’
Consignment? And George had been on drugs!
She was talking about money. I had been carrying money that night. So was she telling me that I’d agreed to become involved in the payment of a sum of money for drugs? And that I would phone a call box and arrange a shadowy meeting in some dark alley, to complete the transaction?
‘We’re talking about drugs?’ I asked carefully.
‘Yes. The consignment he lost.’
And dear heaven, to imagine myself getting involved in drug trafficking! I didn’t want to listen to her.
‘And did I know it involved drugs?’
‘Of course not. I told you he had to have it. I didn’t tell you why.’
She was trying to give me an acceptable explanation, and yet, if I was to believe her, she’d put me in a position of danger that evening. Drugs? What violence that word carried with it. But she had mentioned a ‘consignment’, so £600 began to seem inadequate in that context. It seemed inadequate, too, as justification for the fear in her eyes. All this was past, but the fear was very much in the present, a living thing between us. The simple explanation would be that she could be afraid of me.
And she had a loaded shotgun only ten feet away. The hackles rose on my neck.
‘I don’t believe you, Tessa,’ I said, sticking my neck out, hackles and all.
She was indifferent to my disbelief. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to. It’d put you in rather a poor light.’
‘In what way?’
‘Causing George’s death.’
‘Oh, I see. You’re saying they killed him, these people he owed the money to? Because they didn’t get it.’
She sat back on the stool, one knee clasped in her hands, her mouth open for a laugh that never came. It looked like a laugh. ‘Of course not. They wanted their money. They didn’t get it that night, but I’ve paid it since.’
Her wide, dark eyes told me what she meant, that this was not the cause of her fear.
‘Then who’s frightening you?’ I asked carefully.
She pouted, not accepting my ignorance. ‘I can see I’ll have to trust you again. I can’t go. Tony’ll be here for me soon, and it wouldn’t do if I’m not here. But you can go. Then you’ll see for yourself.’
‘Go where?’
‘To 17C Rock Street.’
I held my breath, waiting. My brain was tossing around again.
‘I know I’m expected,’ she told me, nodding. ‘You’re to say I haven’t got it, and that I never had it. I’ve been telling lies, you can say. But it’s got to come to an end. I can’t go on. Say I shan’t be any more trouble. It’s all over...finished. Make sure that’s understood. Finished.’
Was she talking about George? For pity’s sake, did she still believe him to be alive, as she’d held on to the belief for the past sixteen months?
‘Promise,’ she said.
‘How can I promise that? There’ll be nobody at 17C Rock Street.’
‘You haven’t been listening. You never did. Oh...why did I ever trust you!’
‘I don’t ask to be trusted.’
‘Go there! Go! Do what you can.’
But she was talking to somebody whose mental stability was as rocky as her own. She might need my help in some obscure way, but I needed the backing of total recall before I dared to assist her.
It was ‘true’ that I’d knowingly taken money from her, because that image was clear in my memory. It was also ‘true’ that I’d said I’d phone from the office. But what was not true, because I’d not yet excavated it from my memory, was that she’d written down and given me a phone number, and that it was one I’d promised to call. She was perhaps playing on my memory loss. Did she really expect me to go to 17C Rock Street on such a vague and fantastic story? And why? She spoke of her fear. If it was of me, then this could be a trick to send me there for a very different reason. I was to be lured there.
I believed she was lying. If she’d given me a phone number...well, I knew myself in that respect. I’d have glanced at it, and carried the physical memory in my mind. And there was no such number in my mind.
It came to me abruptly that I could be a danger to somebody. I knew something, but I must not be allowed to remember it. Dead men carry no memories. Except, perhaps, of their own death?
I shuddered from the thought.
‘Can I suggest,’ I said, ‘that you phone your husband now, and ask him to come and fetch you. I’ll wait until he arrives, and then you’ll be safe.’
‘No!’ She was on her feet, her hair wild. ‘No!’ Fury, because the trick had failed?
‘Then I can’t help you.’
I was backing out of the office, my eyes on her. The shotgun could have been a lie, too, but I didn’t dare to bank on that. ‘I’ll go out the back way,’ I said.
Out in the repair area I found it dark and dangerous in itself. I’d been sitting in the light of that bench lamp. Now all was dark to my pampered eyes. I stumbled. Planks of wood moved beneath my feet. I looked down. Dimly I could see I’d disturbed the covers of the old pit they’d used before the hydraulic lift was installed. My heart pounding, I swerved, and headed for the vertical patch of moonlight.
Behind me, she was screaming.
Not waiting to slide the massive door shut again, I fumbled round the outside of the iron building. The metal reverberated under my fingers from her screams. I found myself in the forecourt, running to the Escort, the keys in my hand.
Inside the car it was quiet. Either she’d stopped screaming, or too much space stood between us. Suddenly, it was as though it hadn’t happened. I’d awoken from a nightmare.
I drove away. Not fast. The instinct was to bang down on the throttle and set the tyres spinning, but I didn’t know that I was doing right to leave her. I should perhaps not have been so eager to get away, but I was terribly aware of that shotgun. I am a physical coward, I suppose. Violence is not part of my normal life-style, which was why the memory of a physical encounter with Charlie Graham was so disturbing.
So I drove away, but slower and slower as I progressed.
It was a damp night, the streets quiet in that breath-held pause before the pubs closed. I drifted. My mind was not on my driving. Because of this, when a bus stopped in front of me, I couldn’t make the effort to pull out round him.
I sat there, foot holding the clutch down. Its route number was 259.
259...259…
My mind played with it. A flicker of memory probed it. I watched the bus roll forward, and still I couldn’t summon the necessary actions to
drive away.
259...259...2592...
My brain fumbled. An image intervened. A larger number appeared, but darted away before I could capture it. I groaned with frustration, and the engine stalled as my legs drew up. I couldn’t stop them from doing that. I was drawing them up in self-protection, and there was Graham coming at me again, his face distorted, his fist raised. I put down my face and covered it with my hands, forcing the memory to go away. It wasn’t the image I wanted, the one I knew I had to have.
259…259…my brain cried out. 2592...2592...2592...
Oh God, and it wouldn’t clarify. Charlie Graham was shouting his anger – no, his fear – at me, and I knew the number was more important.
It came up again, the number. It flickered on and off as though with a faulty switch, gone before I could capture it. No, I’d got another digit. Was it a 3? I clung to it, mentally forcing the number to hold steady.
Then I had a stable image. A rectangle of paper. Not white. Brown. On it a number. Felt-tip pen. Blue. Blue on brown.
25923...no, 25928. I had it that far, and yet was aware that the full number had one more digit. It was hidden from me by a crease in the paper. Fingers were creasing it, so urgent was the grip on it. But then I was taking the paper in my own hand, and looking at it squarely.
259287.
I knew then that I had to go back.
There was a tapping sound behind my image, an insistent sound. I lowered my hands, sighing as the true picture of the number faded. As I raised my head the car door opened. A round, serious face, a peaked cap, a checkered band round it.
The trouble was that it was the wrong time to sit in a stalled car with your head in your hands. He smiled slightly.
‘Trouble, sir?’
‘Two five nine two eight seven,’ I said. ‘Write it down.’
He was not disturbed by this answer. ‘If you’d care to get out...’
‘I’m not drunk.’
‘No sir. Of course not. We’ll just check that, shall we.’
‘I tell you I’m not drunk. Write the number down.’
‘Never mind numbers.’ He was becoming impatient.
‘I’d like you to get out of the car.’
‘And if I don’t?’ I felt a stir of anger, that he might deprive me of the number for ever.
‘Then we’ll have to take you to the station, and do it there.’
I got out of the car. If he expected me to be uncertain on my feet, he wasn’t disappointed. I was still not a hundred per cent with the present world. I had to clutch his arm. ‘It’ll have to be the station.’
‘In the other car, sir, if you please. I’ll bring yours.’
‘Then for Christ’s sake, let’s do it fast,’ I said, and plunged for the police Rover.
The driver grinned at me. ‘Seat belt,’ he said. I grabbed it angrily.
‘Let’s get going,’ I said, and he raised his eyebrows at me.
As we started, I gestured to the red glow beneath his dash, above the hanging microphone. ‘Can you call ahead?’
‘We can manage. Don’t worry.’
‘Ask them if Bill Porter’s come in. Ask them...please. If not, try to get him. It’s urgent. I’m not drunk. I’m not crazy. Or perhaps it’d be better if we turned back to Pool Street Motors.’ I glanced at him, but he said nothing.
‘I’ve just come from there. There was a woman, and she was talking about being frightened. She had a shotgun...’
‘You saw it?’
‘No.’
‘Then we’ll go to the station. Bill Porter’s there.’
‘Thank God for that.’
He spoke a few words to his control, was answered with squawks I couldn’t understand, and hung up.
The car leapt forward. I closed my eyes to the swinging streets, and concentrated. 259287
I reached for my pen, found an old receipt, and wrote it on the back. Then I felt better, sat back, and suddenly became so weak that I almost passed out.
12
Bill Porter was waiting on the station steps. ‘Why don’t you let me go home?’ he complained, but I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him inside. There, in the duty office, I gabbled out a condensed version of what had happened. My eyes must have been wild, and my voice on the edge of hysteria, because he was staring at me with uncertainty.
‘I didn’t believe her, Bill. I just couldn’t accept she’d given me a phone number...nor that I’d have phoned from the office. But now I’ve remembered a number, and if she was telling the truth about that...’
‘Did you get the impression she was mentally unbalanced?’
‘I thought that. But she said she was afraid. Maybe it was fear that caused it.’
He grunted. ‘You didn’t see this shotgun she mentioned, though?’
‘No.’ I thrust my receipt at him. ‘Call the number, Bill.’
‘This is your fancy memory we’re talking about?’
‘It won’t hurt you to call it.’
He considered me for another painful moment, then walked over to the counter. I followed him slowly, feeling whacked. He used the phone, carefully dialling: 259287. He listened for a few seconds, then he held it out to me. I could hear the number ringing out.
‘There’s no reply,’ he said unnecessarily.
‘But it is a phone number.’
‘Cliff,’ he said heavily, ‘you must have dozens of phone numbers tucked away in your memory.’
‘I saw this one, clearly, in my mind’s eye.’
‘In your mind’s eye?’ he said flatly, not trusting either the mind or the eye.
‘Bill...ask the exchange whose is that number. They’ll tell you.’
‘Want a bet?’
But all the same he did it. I stood at his shoulder while he mumbled words, waited, mumbled again, then hung up. His face was expressionless when he turned back to me.
‘It’s a phone box,’ he said. ‘At the corner of Rock Street and the Mecklin Road.’
I breathed out fully and drew in a shuddering breath. ‘There you are then.’
‘We’d better go and have a look.’
The two men from the patrol car were standing in the doorway, chatting. Porter raised a finger. ‘You two had better follow me.’ And he walked out, me at his heels.
They had my car in the yard at the side. I automatically moved towards it. He said: ‘We’ll use mine.’ I didn’t argue. I wasn’t sure I could have driven, anyway. I felt cold, right through to the bones, and my legs seemed to be moving stiffly. Twice I had failed her, once in not making contact with George Peters at the call box at the end of Rock Street, and again in refusing to believe her. She had pleaded for help, and I’d not been able to get away from her fast enough.
But if George Peters had been waiting by that phone box for the call, he could not have been the one who attacked me in the office car park.
‘Can’t you go any faster?’ I mumbled.
The patrol car swerved past us, and put on its winker and siren. We went faster. When we drew in behind the pumps at Pool Street Motors the siren was moaning down to silence. Then all was quiet. I lifted my head. Yes, the sliding door was still open, I could hear it thumping.
‘How did you get in?’ Bill asked.
I gestured to the far side. ‘There’s a gap.’
‘There’s a gate this end, though.’
The white, open-paling fencing was broken by a ten feet wide gate, opening into the yard behind. It didn’t look as though it was padlocked. Of course, there’d have to be a way to drive the cars round...‘I happened to be over there,’ I told him.
He grunted, and gestured to the others. The gate swung open. I wanted to run ahead, but my legs hadn’t got a run in them. Bill Porter raised an arm to restrain me, just in case.
‘Take it easy,’ he said.
I led them to the sliding doors. One of the constables slid it open. The small light in the foreman’s office was no longer switched on. I found myself whispering.
‘The switches are over in the corner, by that office.’ I was pointing into blackness. One of the men switched on a torch. It searched out the office. ‘There,’ I said. ‘And there’s a side door to the staircase and the main office above.’
‘Saw it as we came past,’ Bill said. ‘No light up there, either. She’s gone home, Cliff. Tony Clayton came for her, as she said, and he’s taken her home.’
But he didn’t sound convinced. We moved into the repair bay, the torch’s light dancing over the oil-black concrete floor ahead.
‘I’ll get the switches,’ I offered.
‘Careful,’ said the constable sharply.
His torch flicked at the planks I’d almost tripped over coming out. I’d disturbed a couple, I recalled, but surely no more than two. The torch steadied on my feet. Each of the planks, which should have notched into the recessed edges of the inspection pit, was displaced and scattered beside it. I’d nearly walked into a six foot fall.
The constable came to my side and cast the rays down into the pit. It was strewn with empty gallon oil cans and filthy rags. Lying face down amongst them was the woman I’d last seen in skirt and cardigan, beside her the shotgun I hadn’t seen. The back of her head was a pulverised mess.
‘By God,’ whispered Porter, ‘you do find ‘em, don’t you Cliff!’
Then he turned to one of the men, who hurried away. The other one took my arm, and we managed to reach the foreman’s office. He found the bench lamp switch, at around the time that Porter located the main switch by the side door and flooded the building with light.
‘Just sit there, sir, if you will,’ said the constable, then he went away.
I should not have been left alone with my thoughts. Bitter self-recrimination flooded over me, and I sat, huddled with it, trapped with it in the close confines of that office. The trouble was that Tessa was still there, still reaching for me with her voice, pleading for help. And time and again, as the memory tortured me, I was once more getting to my feet and walking away from her. Except that now I couldn’t get to my feet and walk away because I was trapped there. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to walk away from it, because the trap was not the constable’s calm and authoritative directive, it was my conscience.
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